Social Media Campaign Review: Jabong’s Pinterest Contest

Overview

Jabong, the online fashion retail outlet has announced a contest based on Pinterest. Fans have to create a new board titled ‘My Home Style’ and pin at least 15 of Jabong’s home decor products that they would use to renovate their homes.

Objective

The objective of this contest is very simple – to get fans to look at Jabong’s home and living products and even choose their favourite ones and visualise their home with all those products. In effect, though only the top 3 winners stand to win vouchers of 1000, 2000 and 3000 rupees respectively, Jabong hopes to win many more purchases by luring shoppers to their products.

Execution

This contest is based entirely on Pinterest. Winners will be announced on Twitter and the contest has been announced on Jabong’s Facebook page but no buzz has been created yet. The idea of a Pinterest-based contest is quite appealing for a fashion brand where products are visual and suited to pin-up boards.

However, Pinteret’s base of users is miniscule compared to Facebook and that’s where the idea runs into choppy waters. Jabong’s penchant for Pinterest is understandable.

The retailer’s account is pretty active with 72 boards and 2871 pins. However, the brand has only 120 followers. That should give the brand a fair idea of the participation it can expect!

Positives

Points must be awarded to Jabong for creativity and daring to try something new. This campaign may well be a trend-setter for other online retailers if it manages to attract enough participation. Nevertheless, Pinterest is still at a nascent stage in India though usage data suggests that it is the third most popular website in India based on a combination of average daily visitors and pageviews. The study also asserts that 8.0% of the Pinterest users come from India and they generate 7.0% of the pageviews on Pinterest. So maybe there is an opportunity waiting to be tapped here.

Another aspect that I like is the nature of the contest itself – when it comes to home decor, mixing and matching is key for achieving the perfect harmony. And that’s exactly what Jabong encourages fans to do via this contest. The same concept could be extended to clothes as well, where fans could be asked to design a getup for a famous character of their choice.

Scope for Improvement

It seems to me that when a social media campaign is based on only one social platform, it becomes unnecessarily narrow and reaches too small a base to be effective, unless that base happens to be Facebook or Twitter, both reigning stars of the social networking world. though the contest may pick up in the coming weeks, the chances are slim without additional support and options from other social media platforms.

Ankita Shreeram is a News Trainee at CNBC Awaaz, a division of TV18. She is also a freelance writer for The Times of India and holds a post-graduate degree in communication management. An avid social media enthusiast, Ankita swears by Facebook and LinkedIn.